This book makes the case for a unique coastal-urban experience of war on the home front during the First World War, focusing on case studies from the north-east of England. The use of case studies from this region problematises an often assumed national or generalised experience of civilian life during the war, by shifting the frame of analysis away from the metropolis. This book begins with chapters related to wartime resilience, including analysis of pre-war fear of invasion and bombardment, and government policy on public safety. It then moves on to a discussion of power relations and the local implementation of policy related to bombardment, including policing. Finally, the book explores the ‘coastal-urban’ environment, focusing on depictions of war damage in popular culture, and the wartime and post-war commemoration of civilian bombardment. This work provides a multi-faceted perspective on civilian resilience, while responding to a recent call for new histories of the ‘coastal zone’.

Across the twentieth century, the families of people who died in war and disaster were left to make sense of their sudden loss and navigate newfound grief. This book focuses the families of people who died in the First World War and in mining disasters in the early twentieth-century. These bereaved families were often denied access to bodies and choice over burial rights, all while dealing with the increased bureaucracy of death.Families created domestic memorials, which took on additional meaning because of this lack of memorial agency elsewhere. Although the ways that these families were bereaved each took place in different circumstances, the ways that families grieved were recognizable to one another: they drew on common memorial practices, augmented to take on special meaning after sudden death.This memorial material provided a vehicle for families to navigate their loss, but also to communicate the memory of the dead both externally, through donation to museums, and linearly, through ancestral lines. Drawing on a nuanced reading of a wide range of sources - from ephemera to administrative museum paperwork - this book explores family reactions to mass death events in early twentieth-century Britain. The result is a comparative and domestic perspective on mourning at the turn of the century that makes important contributions to the growing field of death studies, and will be of interest to those working on the First World War, interwar Britain, the history of work, the social history of the family, and the history of memorialization. 6 b&w illustrations

"This book is a fascinating novel project researching the effects of bombardment during the First World War on four north-east coastal towns. It makes a much-needed contribution to the history of police work, a developing area of historical research. The book outlines the destruction to the buildings and infrastructure and provides the context of local and national events with the advice and instructions given to the local population. By showing the role of Special Constables, it provides a real insight into the Home Front at this critical time in British history." -Mary Fraser, University of Glasgow, UK "The First World War is both distant and close - our knowledge intimately familiar yet somehow incomplete. Nowhere is this truer than for the unique coastal-urban experience of that conflict explored by Michael Reeve in this book. Focusing on morale, endurance, and public safety, we see and understand new aspects of Britain's coastal zone through German naval and aerial bombardment and destruction in Hull, Hartlepool, West Hartlepool, and Whitby. Local popular culture confronted and framed the tragic aftermaths, with nearby Scarborough's 1915 'Bombardment Museum' housing relics and souvenirs of the attacks, and Hartlepool's 'Bombardment Thank-offering Days' fundraising for hospitalized victims of the December 1914 attack. Shifting between the detail of objects and the grander narratives of context, the author makes a powerful and convincing case for looking afresh at how conflict creates as well as destroys by reconfiguring the people and places of our historic coastline." -Nicholas J. Saunders, University of Bristol, UK This book makes the case for a unique coastal-urban experience of war on the home front during the First World War, focusing on case studies from the north-east of England. The use of case studies from this region problematises an often assumed national or generalised experience of civilian life during the war, by shifting the frame of analysis away from the metropolis. This book begins with chapters related to wartime resilience, including analysis of pre-war fear of invasion and bombardment, and government policy on public safety. It then moves on to a discussion of power relations and the local implementation of policy related to bombardment, including policing. Finally, the book explores the 'coastal-urban' environment, focusing on depictions of war damage in popular culture, and the wartime and post-war commemoration of civilian bombardment. This work provides a multi-faceted perspective on civilian resilience, while responding to a recent call for new histories of the 'coastal zone'. Michael Reeve is a Lecturer in History at Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, UK. He received his PhD in History from the University of Hull, UK, in 2019, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.